1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Light Emitting Diode (LED) housing, and more particularly, an LED housing having a simple assembly structure, which enables mass production in an easy fashion, and a fabrication method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A Light Emitting Diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that is activated in response to electric current to generate various colors of light. The color of light generated by the LED is mainly determined by chemical components of LED semiconductor. Such LEDs have several merits such as longer lifetime, lower driving voltage, better initial activation characteristics, higher vibration resistance and higher tolerance on repetitive power switching over conventional lighting devices using filaments, and thus demand for them is gradually on the rise.
In particular, some LEDs such as high power LEDs are recently adopted in illumination systems and backlight units for large-sized Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs). Such high power LEDs are required to have superior thermal radiation performance because these systems or units require larger power.
FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate a typical high power LED package, in which FIG. 1 is a perspective cross-sectional view of the high power LED, and FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of the high power LED mounted on a circuit board.
Referring to FIG. 1 first, an LED package 10 includes a thermal connecting member 14 (so-called heat slug) with an LED chip 12 seated thereon. The thermal connecting member 14 also functions as heat guide means. The LED chip 12 is powered from an external power source (not shown) via a pair of wires 16 and a pair of leads 18. An encapsulant 20 encapsulates the top portion of the thermal connecting member 14 including the LED chip 12, and a lens 22 is capped on the encapsulant 20. A housing 24 is formed typically by molding, surrounding the thermal connecting member 14 to support the thermal connecting member 14 and the leads 18.
The LED package 10 shown in FIG. 1 is mounted on a mother board 30 as a heat sink as shown in FIG. 2 to constitute an LED assembly 40. A heat conductive pad 36 such as solder is interposed between the heat conducting member 14 of the LED package 10 and a metal body 32 of the main board 30 to promote heat conduction between them. In addition, the leads 18 are also stably connected to a circuit pattern 34 of the main board 30 by solder 38.
The LED package 10 and its mounting structure on the main board 30 as shown in FIG. 1 are focused to thermal radiation to efficiently radiate heat to the outside. That is, the LED package 10 is so designed that the thermal connecting member 14 as a heat sink is mounted directly or via the thermal conductive pad 36 on the main board 30 in order to radiate heat absorbed from the LED chip 12 to the outside. Then, a major quantity of heat from the LED chip 12 is conducted through the thermal connecting member 14 to the main board 30 and only a minor quantity of heat is radiated to the air through the surface of the LED package 12 including the housing 24 and the lens 22.
However, this structure is disadvantageously complicated to obstruct the automation of LED package fabrication as well as require a large number of components to be assembled together, thereby burdening manufacture cost.